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Damen Naval’s R&D department is gearing up to start two new European Defence Fund (EDF) projects. After handing in their project proposals to the European Commission in November 2022, Damen received confirmation just before the summer that they would be part of the consortiums of the REACTS and EUROGUARD projects. “We’re currently in the final negotiation phase, after which we will be signing the various contracts with the European Commission and our consortium partners,” says Peter van Terwisga, Director EU Naval R&D Affairs at Damen Naval (pictured above). Both projects are scheduled to start in December 2023.
The EUROGUARD project has the aim to build a demonstration vessel capable of different autonomous operations within the timescale of four years. This vessel will be tested in Baltic Sea operations to demonstrate the viability of design methods, and innovative ship and weapon technologies.
The project is, says Peter, the biggest R&D cooperation project that Damen Naval has ever participated in. “The total scope is 95 million euros, of which 3.9 million is earmarked for Damen Naval and Damen RDI. If you compare this to one of our new build projects, it is quite small, but within the R&D domain it is a very big project. It is also very relevant – if you look at what is currently happening in the Black Sea, you can see just how important autonomy is.”
Baltic Work Boats has produced an initial design of the EUROGUARD demonstration vessel. © Baltic Work Boats.
Besides working with the project’s other 22 participants to create the semi-autonomous demonstrator platform, Damen’s role will be to develop a generic model-based system architecture. The work will involve cooperation between teams from Vlissingen and Gorinchem. “The generic design will make it possible to design another type of autonomous vessel that complies to a set of slightly different requirements, but using the same technological elements,” explains Peter.
The 48-month timeframe of the EUROGUARD is noticeably short. This means that Damen will be working on the two aspects of the projects (the system architecture and the demonstrator platform) in parallel. It must also be noted that Damen Naval’s work with Project F.A.S.T. means that the EUROGUARD team will not be starting from scratch. “Project F.A.S.T is an element that we want to include in this project,” adds Joep Broekhuijsen, Damen Naval’s Project Manager Research. “It is an existing platform with proven technology. Everything that we learn from the Project F.A.S.T. will help us improve the work on the EUROGUARD project.”
"China have demonstrated that they can do it and Elon Musk is landing rockets on a floating platform – it is a good opportunity for us at Damen to proceed with this exciting subject." Joep Broekhuijsen
Everything learned during the F.A.S.T. project can help improve the EUROGUARD project.
Whereas EUROGUARD will be a development project (actually quite close to market introduction), REACTS is very much a concept design study. Significantly smaller in scope – Damen’s total budget allocation is just over €100,000 spread over 21 months – the aim of REACTS is to investigate multi-domain fast-response space systems. This project has a broad scope. “We will take a very open view on space domain warfare, in which one of the important response actions is to quickly bring new satellites into space. The challenge of REACTS is to bring a satellite into space within 72 hours – looking at the possibilities of launching from land, sea or air,” says Peter. “Damen will be responsible for the conceptual design of the sea launch system.” Of the 35 project participants, Damen is the only shipbuilding company involved.
To generate a concept design study, Damen Naval will look at different options for sea launch operations, notes Joep. “We will be identifying the existing sea launch technologies in addition to any new technologies that could be interesting to develop in the future,” he says. It is fair to say that some of the terms and conditions for the REACTS project are new for Damen. For example, launching a space-bound rocket from a maritime platform does involve a huge amount of heat. “We will be working closely with the other project partners to get this knowledge and information about payloads and rocket systems. And even though sea launch systems do already exist – China have demonstrated that they can do it and Elon Musk is landing rockets on a floating platform – it is a good opportunity for us at Damen to proceed with this exciting subject,” says Joep.
The question remains as to who is going to work on these two projects. For EUROGUARD, there are a number of external job vacancies for systems modelling specialists. For REACTS, however, Joep is looking for someone already working at Damen. “It is a limited budget and therefore a part-time position,” he says. “But we are looking for people who have an affinity with this subject: people who can think outside the box. If people are interested, then we would be happy to hear from them.”